Bangladesh had 2.50 million unemployed people in the second quarter (April-June) of 2023, which was 9,00,000 higher in the first three months.
That means 3.41 per cent of the country’s total workforce are now unemployed. It was 3.51 per cent in Q1 (January-March) of this year.
In Q2, however, the size of the labour market increased slightly at the same time, according to recent data published by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
In Q1, some 71.10 million citizens were engaged in income-generating or productive work, which stood at 70.71 million in Q2. Also, some 46.39 million people went out of the workforce in the first three months and it was 47.31 million in Q2, according to BBS data.
BBS publishes this report every quarter based on the survey conducted at the field level, according to Aziza Rahman, deputy director of the bureau’s Industry and Labour Wing.
She said this data was collected through the survey conducted on 30,816 households at the district level in Q2.
According to the quarterly report, the number of working people in the agriculture sector decreased in Q2 from 31.94 million to 31.15 million while the number also declined in the industrial sector from 12.25 million to 12.2 million.
But at the same time, the number of working people increased slightly in the service sector from 26.91 million to 27.44 million.
According to experts, the import of raw materials and capital equipment in the industrial sector has decreased due to the dollar crisis while inflationary pressures lowered private sector consumption. The demand and production of the industrial sector have come under the combined pressure of these two.
Many workers in the industrial sector are losing their jobs. Also in rural areas, seasonal agricultural workers spend a period of the year in unemployment. The combined effect of these issues is seen in the BBS Labour Force Survey (LFS) report for Q2.
“People went out of the labour force when they stopped looking for jobs after being unemployed. They are not considered as unemployed. Besides, the population who are students, sick, unable to work, on retirement and housewives are also not considered as labour force,” said Zahid Hussain, former lead economist of the World Bank's Dhaka Office.
According to the ILO guidelines, those who have not worked for at least one hour in the last seven days, but were ready to take a job while searching for work for the last 30 days.
Zahid thinks that the number of people working in the agriculture sector declined as the earning is low. Many farmers have switched professions. On the other hand, some workers may have left industries and then did not come back or look for other work out of frustration as the number of job opportunities is decreasing. Many factories are shedding workforce due to recent economic problems.
However, he said, the whole job market has been static in the past year as payment rates have declined. Those who have left work and dropped out from the workforce may have left the country as expatriate workers.
Each year, more than 4,00,000 workers leave Bangladesh for overseas employment, according to the International Labour Organization. In the current year, till September, 9,89,000 people went for overseas employment.
